Susan J. Demas: The GOP Attorney General Race Turns Nasty

The Trump administration might be a nonstop soap opera of insanity in Washington these days, but Michigan’s Republican attorney general race has become quite the spectacle itself.

The GOP battle to replace term-limited AG Bill Schuette is between two term-limited lawmakers, House Speaker Tom Leonard (R-DeWitt) and Sen. Tonya Schuitmaker (R-DeWitt). This week, their scrapping resulted in Schuitmaker declaring that Leonard “needs to grow a pair.”

You can’t ask for a more Trumpian response than that.

It’s befitting of a Republican contest that will be determined by Trump-loving activists at the party convention in August. Races for governor and U.S. Senate are decided in primaries, which are typically low-turnout affairs. But party nominees for AG, Secretary of State, Michigan Supreme Court and state education boards are typically chosen by only a few thousand people who love ideological litmus tests, particularly on the GOP side.

Schuitmaker’s crass barb is a bit disconcerting for those who have known her for years as a rather quiet member of a Republican caucus that features quotable firebrands like Sens. Patrick Colbeck (R-Canton) and Rick Jones (R-Grand Ledge).  

If you’ve been paying any attention to the Republican race, you’d think that Michigan’s AG does nothing but round up illegal immigrants, fire guns and stop abortions. In reality, the job is just a tad tamer and less partisan, and most of the real work is in the important, but less sexy area of consumer protection.

Leonard has the reputation as the more conservative candidate, pushing a (failed) income tax cut right out of the gate last year and recently popping a bill making English Michigan’s official language. That’s the red meat Republican convention-goers crave, even if those votes aren’t terribly helpful to his House colleagues in competitive seats this year.

Leonard also won a star speaking slot at the Macomb County GOP dinner last fall featuring former White House senior adviser and Breitbart head Steve Bannon right before his fall from grace in Trumpland. Bannon, of course, wasn’t exiled because of his publication’s ties to Nazis or doing strategy for Roy Moore, the failed Alabama U.S. Senate candidate accused of sexually abusing several teenage girls, including one who was 14. It was Bannon’s trash-talking of President Trump and his family in the salacious tell-all Fire and Fury that sealed his fate.

Meanwhile, Schuitmaker has been trying to go toe-to-toe with Leonard on right-wing dogma with social media posts slamming sanctuary cities and echoing Trump’s call for the U.S. Justice Department to investigate Hillary Clinton. No doubt, Schuitmaker is trying to make up for the sin of criticizing the “mudslinging” (lol) in the 2016 presidential race after Trump’s “Access Hollywood” tape revealed him bragging about sexually assaulting women.

Once upon a time, conservatives would blanch at a president trying to compel the independent U.S. attorney general and his staff to go after his former election opponent, as that’s the stuff of banana republics. But now a number of Republicans running on law-and-order platforms are campaigning on utter lawlessness.

We’re truly at a unique and disturbing point in history.

Schuitmaker has some practice running right. After representing moderate GOP districts in the Kalamazoo area for most of her career, she had to run in 2014 in a new, highly conservative Senate district reaching into blood-red Allegan County.

In the AG race, she’s gone after Leonard for contributing to his old boss, Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton, who lost the ‘10 AG election to Schuette. On Facebook, Schuitmaker rips Leyton as a “liberal Democrat endorsed by Planned Parenthood.” It would also be accurate to note Leyton recently partnered with Schuette on the opioid crisis, but of course, that’s not how you win a GOP convention fight.

Meanwhile, Leonard has attacked Schuitmaker for her campaign allegedly filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on his wife, Jenell Leonard, who recently stepped down from a high-profile post as head of Michigan’s film office.

In case this isn’t clear, it was a government job paid by tax dollars. Last time I checked, the public was entitled, even under Michigan’s terrible FOIA laws, to find out what their government and the people who work there are up to (unless they’re in the Legislature or the governor’s office).

However, Speaker Leonard decried the FOIA request as “an attack on my family” and accused Schuitmaker of “going to the gutter.” That’s when Schuitmaker responded to MIRS that he “should grow a pair.”

If these two keep it up, they just might make the “mudslinging” of the 2016 election look tame.

Susan J. Demas’ work can be found at SusanJDemas.com. Follow her on Twitter here.

Susan J. Demas: Under Republicans, the Center Doesn’t Hold

Last week, yet another troubled man armed with an AR-15 assault weapon committed mass murder.

The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre in Parkland, Fla., that killed 17, mostly children, is the 1,607th mass shooting since a gunman blew away 27, mostly first-graders, in 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn.

Gun control debates typically go nowhere afterward. Most Republicans roundly reject mainstream, popular and common-sense ideas like universal background checks, banning assault rifles and regulating online, private and gun show purchases.

It’s not a mystery why.

The powerful NRA has become completely unhinged, routinely releasing violent, apocalyptic videos urging people to embrace “the clenched fist of truth” against the “madness” of progressive protests against President Trump and ominously warning the New York Times: “We’re coming for you.”

And so the mainstream conservative position is now to reject nearly any regulation on personal gun ownership. In Michigan, Senate Democrats couldn’t even get domestic abusers and those on the no-fly list banned from the GOP’s “guns everywhere” concealed carry expansion legislation.

There’s hope for some small changes after Parkland, as student survivors like Emma Gonzalez are speaking out, even as some right-wing lunatics spread disgusting conspiracy theories about them.

“Politicians who sit in their gilded House and Senate seats funded by the NRA telling us nothing could have ever been done to prevent this, we call BS. They say that tougher gun laws do not decrease gun violence. We call BS,” Gonzalez declared at a gun-control rally just two days after her classmates were murdered.

But Trump is already pushing cockamamie ideas like arming teachers, which doesn’t inspire confidence.

The problem is GOP has veered so far right on issues that reasonable reforms seem like pipe dreams. It’s almost impossible to win Republican primary today supporting abortion rights and it’s fashionable to say you don’t even believe in exceptions for rape, incest and the mother’s life. The President Reagan approach to immigration is now “amnesty” and most Republicans say nothing as ICE tries to round up parents dropping their kids off at school. The market-based approach of Obamacare was derided as socialism.

Perhaps this ideological inflexibility emerged from how the GOP approaches taxes. After winning lower taxes in the 80s and revitalizing their party, Republicans now see this as the prescription for any economic circumstance.

It doesn’t matter if the stock market is booming or crashing, the economy is growing or shrinking or unemployment is rising or falling. It doesn’t matter if people are hurting, roads are crumbling or schools are failing. Cutting taxes is the only way to go. Those who say maybe enough’s enough are shunned.

So realistically, the only way to enact what used to be considered moderate policy on pressing moral issues like guns, immigration and health care is to elect Democrats in Washington, Lansing and other state capitols.

The center doesn’t hold right now.

We need to stop pretending that it can, just because U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) did the bare minimum of his job and met with his constituents after a massive tragedy at the CNN town hall. We need to stop pretending that vague tweets from the president about saving the Dream Act, which protects undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children, mean anything after he unilaterally killed it last year.

I know and like many Republican legislators personally. I’ve sometimes been one of those “both sides” columnists. But the GOP, as an institution, has shown little ability for compromise and moderation in the last decade. And its embrace of Trump’s nativism, sexism and corruption will go down as a very dark chapter in our country’s history.

As the mother of two teenagers who I pray never experience anything like Parkland, I say enough. As the mother of an LGBT high-schooler who was mercilessly bullied by Trump-supporting upperclassmen after the election, I say enough.

And as someone who believes in those quaint notions of liberty, equality and justice for all, I say enough.

Dante famously wrote that “the hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of moral crisis preserve their neutrality.” That’s where we are right now. No one should pretend otherwise.

Susan J. Demas is Publisher and Editor of Inside Michigan Politics, a nationally acclaimed, biweekly political newsletter. Her political columns can be found at SusanJDemas.com. Follow her on Twitter here.

Susan J. Demas: Michigan Republicans Face Landmines with Trump Tax Hike

Right before Christmas, President Trump signed a Republican tax bill that will raise taxes in Michigan by about $1.5 billion every year.

That’s because the law eliminates the personal exemption, which is $4,000 in Michigan. It’s true that blue states like California and New York have been gouged the most by the plan. That’s by design, as even The Hill declares that red states are using blue states “as their new piggy bank in the GOP Congress.”

But sadly, even newly minted Trump states like Michigan weren’t spared in the tax bill. So that’s left GOP Gov. Rick Snyder and the Republican-controlled Legislature to scramble to fix what the feds have done.

It’s somewhat unusual for Michigan Republicans to try and reverse their Republican brethren in Washington, but it’s a political necessity. The bill has consistently been unpopular, with a majority firmly opposed in several polls. The fact that the Senate rammed it through in the dead of night with handwritten changes scratched in the margins probably didn’t help. (Remember Republicans’ adorable cries of “Read the bill!” during the Obamacare debate?)

Arguing that people aren’t particularly swift and don’t get it probably isn’t a winning argument for the GOP in an election year.

But Republicans — particularly gubernatorial candidates Lt. Gov. Brian Calley and Attorney General Bill Schuette — have to do a lambada-like dance around the fact that their proposals are fixing what Trump has done.

Because if there’s one thing we know about the Trump voters needed to win the August GOP primary, it’s that they don’t take kindly to questioning anything that Dear Leader does. No matter how many times the president erratically speaks, threatens nuclear war over Twitter, or tries to meddle in the federal investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia, the Trump diehards still support him, as we know from the countless media sojourns into flyover country. (The pro-Trump Michigan Conservative Coalition even deploys a Trump lookalike to cultishly trot around events around the state, which is definitely not weird).

On the surface, the tax fix shouldn’t be hard for Snyder, who refused to endorse Trump. But his No. 1 mission to salvage his badly damaged legacy after the Flint water crisis is to get Calley elected. And nobody is going to win a GOP primary by taking on Trump.

So while proposing his plan to restore the personal exemption in Michigan, Snyder made some references to Congress but has carefully tried to avoid the “T-word.” His treasurer, Nick Khouri, gave an assist by arguing that the exemption elimination was an “unintended consequence” of the GOP tax bill.

Snyder’s proposal is simple and makes some economic sense. But the politics are always trickier, so he’s sweetening the deal by increasing the exemption to $4,500 in 2021. That way, the GOP can bill it as a tax cut. And conveniently, any hit to the state budget will be a problem for the next governor and Legislature to solve.

Meanwhile, Schuette, who has won Trump’s endorsement and has sought to tie himself to the president’s hip, is taking the D.C. tax plan lemon and trying to make lemonade.

The centerpiece of Schuette’s campaign is that he’ll kill the Jennifer Granholm income tax hike. A few quick facts: The Democrat hasn’t been governor since 2010 and the tax increase passed the GOP-led Senate during her tenure. Furthermore, Michigan has had a Republican governor and Legislature for the last seven years. Instead of killing the income tax, they enacted in 2011 a $1.4 billion tax hike on individuals to help pay for an almost $2 billion corporate tax cut.

The Trump tax plan would seem to put Schuette in a bind and undermine his core message. But never underestimate the AG’s political skill.

First, he blithely celebrated Republicans for cutting taxes at the federal level. Then he pivoted by calling for Michigan Republicans to “finally eliminate the Granholm income tax increase.”

It’s a pretty ingenious play. Schuette doesn’t just manage to avoid criticizing Trump and congressional Republicans for their tax hike on Michigan. He actually turns this political liability into an opportunity to return to his campaign message of bashing the Granholm boogeyman. This strategy, of course, ignores objective reality, but Schuette benefits from an environment where many reporters fret that they’ll be accused of bias just for performing the simple act of fact-checking.

Schuette proposes rolling back the state income tax from 4.25 percent to 3.9 percent, which Khouri pointed out would disproportionately favor the wealthy (on top of what the congressional tax bill already did). Naturally, Schuette’s GOP allies in the Legislature think that’s a fine idea.

It seems clear that the tax cleanup debate will devolve into a proxy war between Calley and Schuette. So we can probably expect that politics will trump good policy.

Susan J. Demas is Publisher and Editor of Inside Michigan Politics, a nationally acclaimed, biweekly political newsletter. Her political columns can be found at SusanJDemas.com. Follow her on Twitter here.

Susan J. Demas: Michigan Republicans Have a Bannon Problem

Alabama Republican U.S. Senate nominee Roy Moore was supposed to win the special election this week — the Deep South state, after all, is scarlet red. And far-right strategist Steve Bannon was supposed to get all the credit.

Instead, the Heart of Dixie will have its first Democratic senator in 25 years, Doug Jones, a former prosecutor who put KKK members away for the 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four black little girls. He fittingly won thanks to a swell of African-American support at the polls.

Moore, who Atlantic columnist Michelle Cottle charitably describes as “a bit of a loon,” was twice booted from the state Supreme Court for ethics violations and has said Muslims shouldn’t be allowed to serve in Congress. Moore referred to Native Americans and Asian-Americans as “reds and yellows” at a September campaign rally, where he also waxed nostalgic for America under slavery because it was “great at the time when families were united.” He’s also partial to conspiracy theories that Sharia law is spreading in America and former President Obama wasn’t actually born here.

President Trump didn’t endorse his fellow birther in the primary, instead stumping for the establishment GOP pick, U.S. Sen. Luther Strange. That irked Bannon, a former Trump campaign strategist who had recently been fired from his White House senior adviser gig. When Moore handily won the primary, Bannon claimed victory and Trump quickly endorsed the winner.

Bannon has returned to running Breitbart News, whose ties to Nazism have been exposed, and has been busy stoking his reputation as an “evil genius.” He headlined a Nov. 8 Macomb County GOP “Unity” dinner, crammed with 2018 Republican hopefuls eager to see and be seen.

The day after the event, a Washington Post story broke that Moore had allegedly sexually abused teenagers, including one who was 14. A former prosecutor who worked with him at the time said it was “common knowledge” that Moore dated teenagers and the New Yorker reported he had even been banned from a mall for skeeving on girls.

If you were trying to create a horrendous Republican candidate in a lab for an elaborate social experiment on what it would take for Alabamians to finally vote for a Democrat for major office, you really couldn’t do better than Roy Moore.

But the conventional wisdom was that it’s Alabama, man. And in these polarized times, Republicans would come home.

Bannon was already being set up in coverage as the nihilistic mastermind, having convinced Trump to re-engage in the Senate race. The president held a rally in nearby Pensacola, Fla., but it was Bannon taking premature victory laps on stage at Moore’s official events. No one can ever accuse Bannon of lacking an ego. He’s griped that Virginia GOP gubernatorial nominee Ed Gillespie lost his race (by 9 points, mind you) because he refused Bannon’s offer to hold a rally.

Bannon also gleefully cranked up the right-wing outrage machine against Moore’s accusers. Bloomberg News’ Josh Green, who Bannon frequently confided in about strategy during the ‘16 campaign, noted that his Moore rehabilitation playbook took page from Nazi and Soviet propagandists:

“Bannon worked to create a counter-narrative that ultimately would change many Republicans’ perception of the scandal. A former filmmaker, he’s long been captivated by the propaganda films of Leni Riefenstahl, the Nazi filmmaker, and the Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein for their power to shape public sentiment. Earlier this year, Bannon told the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer his 2012 anti-Obama film ‘The Hope and the Change,’ had consciously mimicked Riefenstahl’s infamous, ‘Triumph of the Will.’ Her film, he added, ‘seared into me’ that unhappy voters could be influenced if they felt they were being conned.”

Let’s not gloss over this. In 2017 America, the president’s chief strategist freely admits that he appropriates tactics he admires from the most barbaric regimes of the 20th century, Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.

This is real. And three Michigan GOP gubernatorial candidates — Attorney General Bill Schuette, Lt. Gov. Brian Calley and state Sen. Pat Colbeck (R-Canton) — made sure they were at Bannon’s Macomb soiree. Colbeck even made a public stink that he was bumped from a speaking slot in favor of Schuette. Others attending included U.S. Senate hopefuls John James and Bob Young; Secretary of State candidate Stan Grot; and House Speaker Tom Leonard (R-DeWitt), who’s running for attorney general.

Not surprisingly, Democrats have widely shared photos of top Republicans at the event on social media, which is probably just a preview of 2018 ads to come.

Playing up Bannon ties may still be smart politics next year for those in tough GOP primaries and especially for SOS and AG candidates, who are nominated at party conventions.

But the moral cost of embracing someone who tried to use Nazi agitprop techniques to try to get an accused child molester elected to the U.S. Senate simply cannot be understated or overlooked.

Some days, it’s hard to believe these are the times we live in.

Susan J. Demas is Publisher and Editor of Inside Michigan Politics, a nationally acclaimed, biweekly political newsletter. Her political columns can be found at SusanJDemas.com. Follow her on Twitter here.

Susan J. Demas: I’ve Been Covering Politics for 16 Years. I’ve Never Seen Anything Like Trumpcare’s Collapse Last Night.

I’ve been covering politics for 16 years and obsessively tracking current events since my high school goth phase. And I’ve never seen anything like I did last night when the U.S. Senate’s version of Trumpcare spectacularly went down.

You couldn’t script a more dramatic scenario, with U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who survived five years in the Hanoi Hilton only to recently be diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer, came back from his hospital bed to cast the deciding vote against the so-called “skinny repeal” (which would have left 16 million without health insurance by next year).

Before midnight, it looked like Trumpcare was a done deal. When I watched McCain brush off Republican pressure on the floor and hug U.S. Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) I refused to believe my own eyes. It was going to pass. It was just a matter of time. That was where the smart money was.

But I have never been so happy to be wrong. Why? It’s pretty simple. Trumpcare’s failure means 20,000 fewer deaths and a lot less suffering. This is not an exaggeration. That’s what the research shows.

U.S. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) had hung tough against various versions of Trumpcare and also voted “no.” No, it’s not fair that McCain has overshadowed their repeated principled stands, but the sheer drama of the staunch conservative riding back into D.C. to fight for people — which seemed unbelievably ripped out of “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” — was always going to be the main storyline.

Likewise, many stories don’t mention that every single Democrat in the House and Senate, from the most liberal single-payer advocate like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to vulnerable 2018 red state conservative Dems like Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), never wavered and voted against Trumpcare. Not bad for #DemsinDisarray.

And, as always, the tireless work of everyday people who called, wrote and protested about their health care being snatched away often gets short shrift. But that’s how social change really happens. And it did make a huge difference.

I was trying to think of a comparable scenario to the early-morning drama in the U.S. Senate. I guess it would be like if four more GOP state senators had stood up on Dec. 6, 2012, and shockingly voted against Right to Work in Michigan. But as much of a might-makes-right spectacle as that was, it was not a matter of life or death like Trumpcare is for thousands of Americans.

The last time I was this shell-shocked was starting at 9 p.m. on Nov. 8, 2016, when I saw where the returns were heading in Wisconsin and Michigan for the presidential race. This feeling is much better, so if you’ll excuse me, I am going to savor it for just a little longer.

Susan J. Demas: Republicans Win Rumbles in Michigan, but Stumble in D.C.

Susan J. Demas

With the Hindenburg-like implosion of the GOP health care legislation this week, it’s become fashionable in Washington to say that Republicans just don’t know how to govern anymore.

While President Obama was in office, Republicans proved to be a ruthlessly capable opposition party, holding hostage the once-routine debt ceiling negotiations, forcing a partial government shutdown in 2013, and undermining Obamacare, even though repeal was impossible. That was largely due to the dogged determination of then-U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

Now the GOP now holds the White House, as well as majorities in Congress and even on the U.S. Supreme Court. And yet the party has been fecklessly unable to win its longstanding agenda, including killing Obamacare, enacting sweeping tax cuts for the rich, and chopping entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid. President Trump’s dark populist priorities of a “big, beautiful” wall with Mexico and a border tax are also rotting on the vine.

The lore of McConnell being the “dark lord” of the Senate has definitely taken a hit. So has Trump’s reputation as the consummate dealmaker, as his business experience hasn’t translated at all to the world of D.C. By all accounts, the president has been supremely bored by the health care process and left negotiations up to congressional leaders, with his only goal to sign something — anything — so as to declare victory and stick it to Obama.

Most conservative triumphs this year have come in the form of Trump’s executive orders rolling back environmental protections and fiscal regulations (i.e. the sort of imperial presidency actions for which Republicans eviscerated Obama).

We’re only six months into Trump’s term, so there’s still time to rack up wins. But we’re also less than six months away from 2018, and congressional leaders are typically loath to ram unpopular bills through during election years when voters pay more attention.

And there’s another bright red roadblock. The ever-widening Russia scandal that’s engulfing Trump, his family and top campaign aides is threatening to derail what conservatives believed was a once-in-a-generation opportunity to shrink the size and scope of government and rewrite the tax code.

While Republican voters may be incensed by FBI Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation and insist it’s a “nothingburger,” smarter politicians and strategists are dissolving into night terrors with each new revelation.

This is all “very bad” and “Sad!” as our president might tweet. But I’m not sure that the conventional wisdom that the Republican Party only excels as an obstructionist force is correct.

It’s easy to imagine a more competent and less tainted GOP president — say, Marco Rubio, John Kasich or even prickly Ted Cruz — cajoling members of Congress with far more success. It would still be difficult to pass a complete repeal of Obamacare, but a less ambitious conservative health bill — marshalled by a Republican president not subject to social media war whims or Vladimir Putin’s charms — likely could glide through Capitol Hill.

While this is a hypothetical scenario, we do have some real-world examples of Republican success at the state level. Many states have enjoyed complete GOP control this decade, including Wisconsin, Ohio and, of course, Michigan. And Republicans have been able to achieve some stunning conservative victories.

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder was no true-blue conservative’s first choice. He’s occasionally bucked his party on major issues, like championing Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, and several minor ones, like vetoing the Right to Life license plate (which the savvy lobbying group will just turn into a fundraising opportunity and an ‘18 candidate litmus test).

But Snyder has presided over a right-wing agenda that probably makes former Gov. John Engler pickle with envy. From Right to Work to huge business tax cuts to cuts to welfare and teacher pensions, Michigan has taken a hard right-hand turn — which won’t be undone, even if Democrats recapture the governor’s mansion next year.

That’s not to say that Snyder and more conservative legislative leaders have always had the same priorities or styles. The governor has privately and publicly chafed with many of them.

One of the primary issues is that Snyder, a former CEO, would like legislators to function more as his employees than a co-equal branch of government. But in the era of term limit-fueled inexperience and hyperpartisanship, there have been few big flare-ups.

You would expect this dynamic with Trump and Congress, but the president has curiously ceded most of his agenda to McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.).

So far, however, there’s one clear parallel between Michigan and Washington. Each legislative branch has been willing to give the executive branch a pass — and even play interference — during a major scandal.

Snyder and his team escaped long, ruinous legislative hearings over the Flint water crisis, as Republicans had no appetite for flagellating one of their own. And thus far, Trump has benefited from lax congressional oversight of his campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia, and Ryan and McConnell have refused to engage much with the media on the firestorm.

For now, Republicans at both the state and national level seem resigned to the fact that they’re all playing on the same team, whether they like it or not. Hope for enacting their right-wing agenda springs eternal.

We’ll see if it lasts.

Susan J. Demas is Publisher and Editor of Inside Michigan Politics, a nationally acclaimed, biweekly political newsletter. Her political columns can be found at SusanJDemas.com. Follow her on Twitter here.

Susan J. Demas: A ‘19 Winter’s Tale: Gov. Whitmer and the Part-Time Legislature

Michigan had already been pummeled by four big snowstorms since Thanksgiving, and four more inches had fallen in Lansing overnight. It wasn’t exactly the most auspicious start to 2019.

But the state’s 49th governor seemed unfazed on inauguration day. It had been an unexpectedly bruising primary, but she had prevailed. And even after being badly outspent in the general (the last-minute Republican Governors Association hit comparing her to Queen Cersei was a nice touch), she had still posted a respectable five-point win.

As Gretchen Whitmer gazed out into the winter wonderland from the Capitol steps, she knew her term would be challenging. There was the ongoing crisis in Flint (the Trump administration’s EPA cuts had been devastating) and the huge hole in the state budget thanks to Trump’s Medicaid cuts and the state losing a string of lawsuits regarding Flint and the Unemployment Insurance Agency.

But then her eyes fell on the man who had inadvertently made her job a little easier: Brian Calley.

The youngest lieutenant governor in the nation had long dreamed of being up on that dais himself. Soon-to-be former Gov. Rick Snyder had tasked him with a number of big projects, from slashing business taxes to the new bridge to Canada to cleaning up the mess the administration had made in Flint.

Like most LGs, however, Calley was essentially unknown outside the six-square blocks surrounding the Capitol. He knew he would have to face the smoothest of rivals in the GOP primary, Attorney General Bill Schuette, who seemed to have started plotting his gubernatorial run during his exit from his mother’s womb.

To make matters worse, Calley’s boss was one of the most unpopular governors in the country. And Democrats were fired up after Trump’s election, just as Republicans were during the 2010 backlash to Barack Obama’s historic win.

Calley knew he’d have to do something big. So he turned to the wise counsel of his long-time consultant John Yob, back from his self-imposed exile in the Virgin Islands after surviving the world’s most comical slapfight with another GOP consultant at a ‘15 Mackinac conference.

And so it was decided. The LG would head up a renewed effort for the lost cause of the conservative anti-establishment crowd, a part-time legislature.

There was only one way to tease the announcement, with a gritty 30-second spot featuring Calley on a rowing machine, grunting about “Frank Underwolf” in a botched “House of Cards” reference.

It was as bad as the policy itself. Thanks to having one of the most restrictive term-limits laws in the nation, Michigan had languished for decades with inexperienced lawmakers who routinely outsourced legislating to lobbyists. This new constitutional amendment would cede a great deal of the Legislature’s power to the executive branch.

Calley suggested businesses would line up to grant their employees a leave of absence to serve in the Legislature, which could only meet a maximum of 90 days annually. That prompted GOP former Rep. Mark Ouimet to laud the proposal for giving businesses “inroads into government that they can’t get now,” which a cynic might interpret as an endorsement of lawmakers representing the interests of their employers over those of their constituents.

The part-time legislature proposal also slashed legislative salaries to roughly $30,000 a year, virtually guaranteeing that the best and the brightest would take a hard pass on running.

Naturally, it passed by a landslide in 2018. But Calley didn’t fare quite as well.

So as Whitmer contemplated the next four (or with any luck, eight) years, she knew she would have to contend with a Republican-controlled Legislature. They were going to despise her business tax hike (“It’s time for everyone to pay their fair share!”) or her budget calling for a 10-percent across-the-board increase to education (pre-K to post-grad).

But Republicans only had 90 days this year to fight her about it. And if they went into extra innings, lawmakers would have to work for free (and hope their super-altruistic employers granted them even more time off).

Talk about leverage.

As a lawyer, Whitmer had already delved into the question of how much the executive branch could do when the Legislature wasn’t in session and how far she could push her de facto powers (her team concluded she had a wide berth, even with a Republican-majority state Supreme Court, which would be hesitant to hamstring a future GOP governor).

And she was really looking forward to the 2021 redistricting battle royale during an abbreviated session, even if Republicans maintained a vice grip on the Legislature in the ‘20 election. Her longtime friend, former Michigan Democratic Party Chair and Stanford-trained attorney Mark Brewer, already had maps drafted carving out a bevy of new blue seats in Kent and Oakland counties that were going to make Republicans retch.

As Calley made his way up to congratulate her, Whitmer graciously thanked him — for everything. But as he turned to leave, she couldn’t help herself and whispered three more words: “Winter is coming.”

Susan J. Demas is Publisher and Editor of Inside Michigan Politics, a nationally acclaimed, biweekly political newsletter. Her political columns can be found at SusanJDemas.com. Follow her on Twitter here. 

Susan J. Demas: Run, Dr. Mona, Run

Why We Need People Like the Flint Whistleblower To Get Political

Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha is a bona fide hero.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that without her unflagging advocacy for her patients and the people of Flint, we could still be in the throes of deadly denial about the water crisis.

Many others sounded the alarm, from residents to pastors to politicians like U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Flint), a likely 2018 candidate for governor.

But elected officials’ motives are always viewed with suspicion by the media and public. The default assumption nowadays is that politicians are always looking out for their career first and the people they serve second. Quite a few self-serving politicians — say, a president who can draw money from his myriad businesses at any point without disclosing it to the public — have certainly fed this stereotype.

So it’s not really a surprise that we’re much more comfortable with non-political figures, particularly Hanna-Attisha and Virginia Tech Professor Mark Edwards, serving as the proverbial “white hats” in this wretched story.

But when you have a public health crisis of this magnitude, you can’t avoid politics for long. After all, the state, and to a lesser degree, the federal governments are the reason why people were poisoned, according to Gov. Rick Snyder’s own task force. And the government ultimately has the responsibility to help those harmed and make damned sure this never happens again.

Last year, both Democratic presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, spent a lot of time in Flint before Michigan’s March primary. They even agreed to a last-minute presidential debate in the city.

None of the GOP hopefuls bothered to stop by and Donald Trump only visited the non-operational water plant there long after he secured the nomination. But that didn’t stop Republicans like Snyder and now-Republican National Committee Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel from sniffing that Democrats were politicizing the tragedy.

I’m on record noting that everyone politicized the crisis and no one should care. At least it brought some much-needed attention and aid to the long-suffering city.

Hanna-Attisha first dipped her toe in political controversy when she couldn’t stop shaking her head “no” at a Snyder administration’s January 2016 press conference. The physician took issue with how then-Health and Human Services Director Nick Lyons minimized the damage caused by lead poisoning. A year later, Snyder smartly appointed Hanna-Attisha to serve on his Child Lead Exposure Elimination Commission.

There was certainly some private grousing among Republicans that the pediatrician was making Snyder look bad over Flint, but people were smart enough not to say so publicly.

But the grumbling has gotten progressively louder after Hanna-Attisha spoke this winter at the Michigan Progressive Summit, which is kind of like Lollapalooza for liberals. The Iraqi-born immigrant praised the 1936 Flint sit-down strike and slammed the Emergency Manager law for being “undemocratic.” She revealed she’s not a fan of the Electoral College and criticized gerrymandering.

She also wrote a powerful New York Times op-ed on Trump’s Muslim ban, noting that her family arrived in the United States in 1980 “full of hope, trading a future of war, fascism and oppression for one of peace, freedom and opportunity.” The doctor argued they would have been denied entry to the country if the ban had been in place, which is causing the “American dream to fade away.”

And Hanna-Attisha accompanied Kildee to Trump’s address before the joint session of Congress. She issued a joint statement with him afterward slamming the president for failing to mention Flint and vowing to cut the Environmental Protection Agency.

She’s told the media she’s not going to run for office. But this will probably all make her a political target anyway. The right-wing Independent Women’s Forum just published a mocking post on the “March for Science” this month in Washington, which appeared to question the physician’s qualifications to speak there.

Hanna-Attisha will likely soon be subject to admonishments from conservative and centrist opinion-makers that she’s sullying her cause by “getting political” or becoming an unwitting tool of the left. That’s naturally pretty insulting to someone with a medical degree.

And it also underscores a destructive, self-sabotaging force in politics today. Most people — even those who work in and around government — agree that politics is a filthy, filthy business. And so therefore, anyone who sullies their hands by speaking out or running for office is viewed as being somewhat tainted.

That’s, of course, a terrific (and perhaps a deeply cynical) way to drive good people away from politics.

Think about it. Why wouldn’t we want people making positive change in Flint or anywhere else to talk publicly about political problems or make the leap to being a candidate for office? That’s how this is supposed to work.

I understand why Hanna-Attisha may not want to run for anything. She would lose plenty of friends and discover she has enemies she never imagined. Her personal life would be put under a microscope and judged. And some of the same folks who fell over themselves praising her unselfish work in Flint would now finger-wag that she’s just a typical politician.

But we desperately need people like Hanna-Attisha in public service, now more than ever. And if our political culture drives people like her away, it’s hard not to wonder if it’s irrevocably broken.

Susan J. Demas is Publisher and Editor of Inside Michigan Politics, a nationally acclaimed, biweekly political newsletter. Her political columns can be found at SusanJDemas.com. Follow her on Twitter here.

Susan J. Demas: Can Gov. Snyder Save Part of Obamacare?

Gov. Rick Snyder is jetting off to Washington, D.C., this week on a dual mission. The Republican governor, who was a vocal critic of Donald Trump during the presidential campaign and refused to endorsement, will make nice by attending the inauguration.

But he’ll also be pushing back against part of one of the new president’s biggest priorities: repealing Obamacare. Snyder is also set to attend a GOP roundtable on Medicaid, which was expanded under Obamacare.

During his first term, Snyder dueled with many conservative members of his party to shepherd the Medicaid expansion through the Legislature. He doesn’t want Congress to scrap it. He will, no doubt, sell the reform aspects of the “Healthy Michigan” plan as a conservative alternative to how Medicaid operates in other states.

Now 640,000 Michiganders have Medicaid coverage under Obamacare, which shattered all expectations. And Rick Snyder is their best hope for keeping their health care.

There are roughly 240,000 Michigan residents on top of that who gained health insurance under Obamacare, according to ACASignups.net, the nationally acclaimed site tracking data run by Bloomfield Hills web designer Charles Gaba. That’s thanks to measures like health care exchanges aimed at those without employer-based plans, the ban on insurance companies refusing coverage due to preexisting condition, and the provision allowing those up to age 26 to stay on their parents’ health plans.

In total, about 885,000 Michiganders gained health insurance under Obamacare. So roughly 9 percent of Michigan’s population could lose their coverage if the law is repealed.

If Snyder can help sell Trump and Republicans in Congress on keeping the Medicaid expansion, that would make a huge difference for Michigan. But it still isn’t clear what will happen to the more than a quarter-million people who obtained insurance outside Medicaid, many of whom are small business owners who have long struggled to find affordable coverage. It will be interesting to see if Snyder and other Republicans advocate for them, as well.

Snyder spent much of his seventh State of the State address this week touting the state’s economic comeback, his favorite theme.

But the governor clearly recognizes that state’s recovery could be jeopardized if 9 percent of Michiganders suddenly lose coverage under the GOP Obamacare repeal. No doubt he and other governors on the front lines will forcefully make that case, both at the roundtable and behind closed doors.

We’ll have to see if President Trump and the Republican Congress ultimately decide to listen.

Susan J. Demas is Publisher and Editor of Inside Michigan Politics, a nationally acclaimed, biweekly political newsletter. Her political columns can be found at SusanJDemas.com. Follow her on Twitter here.

Susan J. Demas: What Rick Snyder Could Learn from Obama on Flint

This column appeared in Dome Magazine.

Gov. Snyder has lost the people of Flint, and there’s no getting them back.

He’s pointedly avoided public events in the city since acknowledging the water crisis roughly eight months ago, choosing instead to hold tightly controlled news conferences.

If Snyder was hoping Flint residents’ anger would dissipate with time, he was proved dead wrong last week during President Obama’s visit.

The governor did what he should have done back in September 2015. He apologized to the people of Flint –– in Flint.

“You didn’t create this problem ––” Snyder started to tell the crowd of 1,000 at Northwestern High School.

But students cut him off, shouting, “You did!”

No one in the gym heard the second part of Snyder’s sentence: “Government failed you.”

It was all too little, too late. Snyder didn’t bother speaking much longer. No one was listening.

When Obama took the stage to cheers and applause, he acknowledged the governor, as he should have. But the crowd booed again and the president threw him a lifeline, asking people not to.

Obama then announced Democratic officials in attendance: U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Lansing) and U.S. Reps. Sandy Levin (D-Royal Oak), John Conyers (D-Detroit), Debbie Dingell (D-Ann Arbor), Dan Kildee (D-Flint) and Brenda Lawrence (D-Southfield). None of them were jeered.

And there you have it –– the credibility gap on the Flint water crisis in action.

Republicans, led by Michigan GOP Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel, have valiantly tried to pin the issue on the Environmental Protection Agency, and thus Obama.

Of course, the facts say otherwise. The EPA failed, for sure, but the Flint water crisis was a state-created problem. Even the governor’s special task force found in its 116-page report that state-appointed emergency managers made the crucial decision to switch to the corrosive Flint River. The move was made to save money, which led to lead and legionella poisoning.

While Snyder and Republicans have been spinning and obfuscating about what they knew, Democrats like Kildee and Senate Minority Leader Jim Ananich (D-Flint) have kept their doors open to Flint residents. And they’ve pushed for answers and aid.

Even Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders came to Flint, which prompted a round of “Democrats are politicizing the crisis” stories fed by Republicans.

But while that criticism had cachet with a cynical press corps, few people in Flint cared. They just wanted help. They just wanted people to listen. And if politicians had their own agenda, well, that’s what politicians do.

It beat the response from the governor, who’s still blaming “career bureaucrats” and hasn’t met with Flint families clamoring for his attention.

It’s not hard to see why Obama is more trusted, even though he certainly could have come to Flint sooner. From the early days of his presidency, he was mercilessly mocked by conservatives for stressing the value of empathy and its role in public service.

But people in that gym believed that the president cares. They clearly don’t think that of our CPA governor, who’s chosen balance sheets over people, time and time again.

Snyder’s allies fervently believe he’s gotten a raw deal and is being scapegoated. And partisans will always think that.

But consider how Snyder handled the president’s visit. It was a public relations disaster for the governor, from start to finish. And he’s had eight months to come up with a decent strategy. Although Snyder has cycled through key staff and high-priced PR firms, he’s still blowing it.

Last month, Snyder pledged to drink Flint water for 30 days to prove it was safe. A few days into the stunt, he announced he was heading to Europe on a trade mission and suspending his water pledge. What a fantastic PR move: The governor ditches Flint water for Perrier.

Then Obama announced he would be coming to Flint, crediting a heartfelt letter from 8-year-old Mari Copley, known as “Little Miss Flint” (because that’s how you do a PR stunt right).

Snyder was overseas and was like, “Oh, man, I’m really busy right now. Don’t think I can make it.”

When that went over like a lead balloon, the governor arrogantly demanded a meeting with the president in Flint –– as if the protocol is that governors get to call the shots with presidents. And Snyder went even further, challenging Obama to drink Flint water to deflect from his failures.

Of course, Obama has had seven years of dealing with petulant Republicans, like U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) shouting, “You lie!” in the middle of his first State of the Union. So the president indulged Snyder on both counts and the governor said he’d come to the public event.

Perhaps Snyder’s media consultants were high-fiving one another over their apparent PR coup.

But when Snyder walked on stage, nothing could save him from the raw anger of the people of Flint. The president showed an incredible amount of empathy that he would even try after Snyder’s crass one-upmanship.

And therein lies the difference between the two men.

Susan J. Demas is Publisher and Editor of Inside Michigan Politics, a nationally acclaimed, biweekly political newsletter. Her political columns can be found at SusanJDemas.com. Follow her on Twitter here.